With the election a tangled legal mess and the popular vote winner possibly not the electoral vote winner, it might seem like a good idea to abolish the Electoral College. Well, it isn’t.

Democrat Vice President Al Gore seems to have won the popular vote at this point, but his lead is narrowing by the day. And several million absentee ballots are still at large.

Who’s to say, once every absentee ballot has been tallied, that Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush won’t come out ahead?

Gore’s highest popular vote lead was only a couple hundred thousand. Of over 100 million ballots cast, that’s nothing. In fact, Gore is less than 0.002 percent behind Bush.

With a margin that tight, a nationwide automatic recount would be triggered in a popular vote-based system.

There are enough problems keeping track of the votes in Florida; imagine if that chaos was multiplied across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Bush has decided not to recount the votes in Iowa and probably other states because, without Florida, he would need at least three more wins in the contested states to have an Electoral College victory.

However, if the popular vote decided the election, Bush would probably recount all his strong states, since recounts tend to bring in addition votes in proportion to the original count. And Gore would then counter by demanding recounts in the states that supported him, including Iowa.

The Electoral College system just makes sense. In America, we have senators elected by state and House members elected by state district; each state can create its own laws, so long as they’re not in conflict with federal laws; states have their own senates, houses, judicial systems and executives.

Presidential candidates are chosen by state delegates as determined by state caucuses. And if the Electoral College were to be abolished, the Constitutional amendment would have to be ratified by two-thirds of states.

Any ISU student or faculty or staff member who wanted to could have seen Bush or Gore in person. Gore had a rally on campus just a few days prior to Election Day; not long before then, Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney attended a Cyclone football game.

You can kiss all that goodbye if the Electoral College goes.

Iowa currently accounts for 1.3 percent of the electoral votes. With an election this close, that’s huge.

But Gore only won Iowa by about 3,000 votes. That’s about 0.00003 percent of the popular vote.

Even in a nail-biter like this election, such a small margin would not be worth either candidate’s time.

Why would any presidential candidate try to sway a couple thousand voters in Ames when he or she could be down in Los Angeles or New York City, accruing millions?

Contrary to popular belief, candidates do sleep occasionally. They have only a limited amount of time to make their messages known to the masses. 1.3 percent of the deciding vote is worth battling over; 0.00003 percent is not.

And in an election where a candidate wins Iowa by a larger margin, the candidate would likely win the popular vote by such a substantial margin that our votes would still be rendered insignificant.

The number of electors per state is determined by the number of Senate members plus House members per state. Since the House of Representatives is determined according to population and the Senate is composed of two senators per state, the states are weighted so smaller states are worth more than they should be by population.

That way, less-populated states can’t be completely ignored by candidates, while larger states don’t suffer.

California, with 54 electoral votes, New York with 33, Texas with 32 and, obviously, Florida with 25 are all still vital to a candidate’s victory. While Los Angeles residents and New Yorkers would receive more visits without the Electoral College, candidates drop by those big cities often enough that every citizen can attend at least one rally.

The Electoral College doesn’t hurt our voting rights — it preserves our rights by giving residents of smaller states a chance to make a more informed decision.